The End of The Road
by N7 Pringles
Summary: This is my life now. Even Cayde had enough of my disobedience and sent me here, the dying place for Guardians. They call it the "Kaukopartio" and this is where they send insubordinate ones. I lost my name in the Hall of Titans, my rank, everything.


_"We're taking away your Ghost, and your official standing as a Guardian of the City-"_

 _"But Cayd-"_

 _"No! You made the choice, you disobeyed a direct order and now Alex is dead!"_

* * *

"A bit rudimentary, don't you think?" I asked, crossing my arms around my chest and frowning. It indeed was the most makeshift dam I had ever seen, just sticks and stones. "How do you figure they did it?"

"By the looks of it, just kept lobbing things into the river until it all stopped moving..." Anders said, staring at it the same as me. "Did they really send us here to destroy this?"

"Yeah tell me about it..." I sighed. "It's about to come crashing down on itself any minute..."

Anders took a deep breath and shrugged. "Hey cap'n, what's the word on those infantry units? They anywhere to be seen?" He asked through the radio on his shoulder. All of our gear was basic and old, no fancy helmet radios or direct comm links.

"They've cleared out, long ago by the looks of it. Nothing but few frozen corpses and some junk they've left behind here..." Our team leader replied, the radio going static for a second. "How's it looking up there? Think you can bring the dam down?"

"Yeah we got it, it's nothing but sticks and some rocks here" I hopped on the line.

"Copy that, chuck some dynamite in it and get moving, we're losing sunlight fast"

"Understood, Chief out" Anders said, pulling off his helmet. "Jesus Christ how cold is it?"

I tapped on the small tactical pad on my wrist before pulling my own helmet off, the lights blinking before turning off. "It's... Minus -30 degrees Celsius, good lord..."

"That's North Europe for you" Anders shrugged. "Go set the charge"

"What? Why do I have to do it?"

"Because I outrank you"

"The hell you do"

"Definitely do"

"Absolutely don't"

"Chief orders" Anders grinned as he pulled his helmet off as well. "Now go" he said, handing me the dynamite.

I cursed something, handing him my helmet and taking the dynamite. The stream was wide, and I really didn't like the idea of walking across the stupid makeshift damn.

"Don't fall, the water is probably really cold" Anders kept fucking with me from the bank as I made my way across it.

"Oh fuck off" I cursed over my shoulder. One step at a time I made my way towards the middle of the dam.

"Don't be a big baby" he laughed.

"Captain we're about done here, we'll circle around to the camp, make sure they're gone for now" I said after figuring out the demolition for few minutes.

"Copy that, we'll be waiting with Sky at the camp" he replied.

"Didn't take a dip then?" Anders asked as I made my way back to the bank, extending his arm to help me up.

"No I decided to leave that to you, I'm cool enough already" I said and gave him a push. "Come on, let's get the hell out of here"

We made our way to the sad excuses of vehicles we had. Two old ATVs we had found months ago in an abandoned military base. It took us few days to get them up and running but when they did they definitely beat walking.

"I mean I kind of understand why they took away our ghosts, but why our ships and sparrows too?" I asked over the radio as we raced through the woods.

"You're in the Kaukopartio now, they send us here to stay out of their hair until we die" Anders said factually, not even a bit of bitterness in his voice. "We make due with what we have"

He was right. Kaukopartio, or Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol was the unit that the Vanguard sent their troublemakers. Obviously Cayde and Ikora didn't mind, so pretty much everyone had been sent here by the commander. I say everyone, it's 4 guardians here and another 8 somewhere in the solar system, we'd only heard rumors. Now we wondered and travelled the system, causing damage to any enemies we found.

We drove through the early night, my tacpad showing the time around 1am when we stopped to refill our water in a nearby creek.

"Naomi how's the situation there?" I asked as Anders climbed from the creek bank with our water. My inquiring was met with empty static. "Naomi come in?"

"What's up?" Anders asked as he handed me the canteen.

"I can't raise Naomi"

"What? Have you tried Sky?"

"No I mean the line is open, just nothing is coming through"

"Well that's not normal" Anders said, checking his tacpad. "We're still few hours from the camp"

I thought for a moment, leaning on the handlebars. "What were our rules again? 3 missed windows is bad?"

"You think something's wrong?"

"I don't know, I have a feeling... Let's keep moving, if we don't hear anything within let's say 5 miles we move to op2 and get eyes on the camp?"

"Sounds good" Anders nodded. "Let's get going"


End file.
